When he saw her he said: ‘She will lose the child.’

Those were sad days at Enderby. Damaris recovered but she was in despair.

‘It seems I shall never have my own child,’ she said.

Priscilla came over constantly to see her but it was Anita who nursed her and made herself indispensable in the household. Benjie stayed on. He would not go until he knew that Damaris was out of danger.

I heard the servants whispering.

‘It’s this house,’ they said. ‘It’s full of ghosts. How did the mistress come to fall? I reckon it was someone, something—that pushed her.’

‘There’s never going to be no luck in this house. There’s tales about it that go right back into the past.’

I began to wonder whether there was anything in it. When it was quiet in the house I would stand below the minstrels’ gallery and fancy that the shadows up there took shape and turned into people who had lived long ago.

Benjie rode over often during that spring and summer, and during one of his “visits Anita came to me in the schoolroom looking radiant.

‘I have news for you, Clarissa,’ she told me. ‘I’m going to be married.’

I stared at her in amazement and then suddenly the truth dawned on me. ‘Benjie!’ I cried.

She nodded. ‘He has asked me and I have said yes. Oh, most joyously have I said it. He is the kindest man I ever knew. In fact, he is a wonderful man and I can’t believe my good luck.’

I hugged her. ‘I am so pleased… so happy. You and Benjie. It’s obvious… and absolutely right.’

I felt that a great responsibility had been lifted from my shoulders. This concentration on responsibility was becoming an obsession. Benjie was no longer someone to whom I owed something. He had lost Carlotta and myself—well, now he would have Anita.

Arabella’s comment was: ‘Harriet would have been pleased.’

They all agreed that it was the best thing possible for the pair of them.

‘Of course,’ said Priscilla, ‘we shall have to think of getting a new governess for Clarissa.’

‘We shall never get anyone like Anita,’ sighed Arabella.

Damaris said she would teach me in the meantime and added that Anita must be married from Enderby, which was, after all, her home.

So the wedding took place. The preparations absorbed Damaris, for she was determined that Anita should feel that she was one of the family. I think we were all especially happy for Benjie’s sake. He had changed; his melancholy had dropped away from him, and it was wonderful to have something happy taking place.

So they were married and Anita left Enderby Hall to set up house with Benjie at Eyot Abbas. I had passed my eleventh birthday when the Treaty of Utrecht was signed. There was a great deal of relief about that because it meant that the war was over. Great-Grandfather Carleton discussed it constantly and at the dinner table at Eversleigh Court we heard little else. He would bang the table and expound on the iniquities of the Jacobites and how this was their coup de grâce.

‘Best thing that could have happened,’ he said. ‘This will teach those traitors a lesson. Louis will have to turn them out of France now. There’s no help for it. We shall have them sneaking back to England.’

‘Everyone has a right to his or her views, Father,’ Priscilla reminded him.

He looked at her from under his bushy eyebrows and growled: ‘Not when they’re treacherous Jacobite ones.’

‘Whatever they are,’ insisted Priscilla.

‘Women!’ muttered Great-Grandfather Carleton.

We were all glad that the war was at an end, and as Philip of Anjou was now King of Spain it all seemed pointless that it had ever taken place. Priscilla’s brother Carl would probably be home now, for he held a high position in the army, and that would be a source of delight to Arabella and Carleton.

The year passed peacefully. I went in the summer to Eyot Abbas and was delighted with the change since my last visit. There was no doubt that Anita and Benjie were happy. The house was more like it had been when Harriet was alive.

It was September, a rather chilly day, for the mists had continued through the afternoon and we had not seen the sun. I had ridden over to Eversleigh Court as it was a Sunday and it became a habit for us to dine there on that day. Grandmother Priscilla was insistent that we keep up the habit. It cheered Arabella, she said, who had never really recovered from Harriet’s death, and whose health was not as robust as it had been.

Even I could see the change in both great-grandparents. Arabella looked very sad sometimes, as though she were looking back into the past, and her eyes took on a misty look as she remembered. My great-grandfather made a show of being more irascible than before but at times he was a little unconvincing.

I remember we had dined, and were sitting back sipping elderberry wine which had come from Arabella’s stillroom, and she and Priscilla were assessing its quality and comparing it with the last brew. Carleton was rambling on about his favourite topic—Jacobites. The fact that my father had been one of the leaders made no difference. Whenever he thought of them his face would grow a shade more purple and his eyebrows would quiver with indignation.

I always felt a need to defend them because whenever he talked in this way it brought back vivid memories of Hessenfield. Sometimes I wondered whether Carleton knew this. He had a mischievous streak in his nature and when he was interested in young people he would tease them more persistently than if he liked them less. I would often find those bright eyes peering out from the bushy brows which seemed to have sprouted more hairs every time I saw him.

Even now, although he was supposed to be talking to Leigh and Jeremy, his eyes were on me. He had probably noticed my rising colour and a certain flash in my eyes.

‘He, ha!’ he was saying. ‘“Get out,” said the King of France. Court of Saint Germain! What right has James to set up a court of his own when he’s been drummed out of the only one he could lay claim to!’

‘He had the permission of the King of France to do so,’ Jeremy reminded him.

‘The King of France! The enemy of this country! Of course he would do everything he could to irritate England.’

‘Naturally,’ put in Leigh. ‘Since he was at war with us.’

‘Was! Ah… was!’ cried Carleton. ‘Now what will happen to our little Jacobites, eh?’

I could not bear any more. I thought of Hessenfield, brave, strong, tall. He became taller in my mind’s picture as time passed, and so had I magnified his virtues, so diminished his faults, that he had become the perfect man. There was none like him and if he had been a Jacobite then a Jacobite was a wonderful thing to be.

‘They are not little,’ I burst out. ‘They are tall… taller than you are.’

Carleton stared at me. ‘Oh, are they indeed? So these traitors are a race of giants, are they?’

‘Yes, they are,’ I cried defiantly. ‘And they are brave and…’

‘Just listen to this,’ cried Carleton. His eyes opened wide so that the bushy brows shot upwards, and his jaw twitched, which usually meant he was suppressing amusement. He looked fierce, though, as he banged the table. ‘We’ve got a little Jacobite in our midst. Now, my girl, do you know what happens to Jacobites? They are hanged by the neck until they are dead. And they deserve it.’

‘Stop it, Carleton,’ said Arabella. ‘You’re frightening the child.’

‘He is not!’ I cried. ‘He just said Jacobites are little and they are not.’

Carleton was not going to be deprived of his teasing.

‘We shall have to be watchful, I can see. We must make sure that she does not start a conspiracy here in Eversleigh. Why, she’ll be raising a rebellion, that’s what she’ll be doing.’

‘Don’t talk such nonsense,’ said Arabella. ‘Try some of these sweetmeats, Clarissa. Jenny made them specially for you. She said they were your favourites.’

‘You talk of sweetmeats when our country is being put to risk,’ cried Carleton; but I knew he was only amusing himself at my expense and I was satisfied because I had made my point about the height of Jacobites and had stood by Hessenfield, so I turned to the sweetmeats and selected one which had a flavour of almonds which I particularly liked.

Carleton’s attention had strayed from me but he was still with the Jacobites.

‘They say the Queen favours her brother. That’s what comes of women’s reasoning.’

I looked at him sharply and said: ‘That’s treason against the Queen. It’s worse than saying Jacobites are tall.’

I saw his chin twitch and he was putting on the fierce look again.

‘You see, she will betray us all.’

‘It’s you who do what,’ I reminded him, ‘by speaking against the Queen.’

‘That’s enough, Clarissa,’ said Priscilla, who was always nervous of political issues. ‘Now I am tired of this talk and we will leave the men if they want to fight out their silly battles on the table. I should have thought the recent peace and all the losses we have suffered to reach it would have been sufficient answer to all their theories.’

Sometimes Priscilla, who was of a somewhat meek nature, could subdue Carleton as no one else could—not even Arabella. My grandmother was an unusual woman. She must have been to have borne my mother in secret in Venice. I was to discover how it happened in due course, because it was the custom of members of our family to keep a journal and in this they usually put down frankly and honestly what happened to them. It was a point of honour with them that they should do so; and when we were eighteen—or before that if the moment was ripe—we were allowed to read our ancestresses’ versions of their lives.

We were just about to rise and leave the men at the table when one of the servants came in, looking bewildered.

Arabella said: ‘What is it, Jess?’

Jess said: ‘Oh, my lady, there’s a person at the door. She’s foreign… don’t seem to be able to talk. She just stands there and gibbers saying… Miss Clarissa… and Miss Damaris… That’s all she seems to say that makes sense, please, my lady. The rest is all nonsense… like.’

Damaris had risen. ‘We’d better see what it’s about. She mentioned me, you say?’

‘Yes, Mistress. She said Miss Damaris… plain as that. And Miss Clarissa too.’

I followed Damaris into the hall. Arabella and Priscilla were close behind. The great oak door was open and on the threshold stood a figure in black.

It was a woman and she was clutching a bag. She was talking rapidly in French. It came back to me as I listened and I ran to her.

She looked at me disbelievingly. I had changed a great deal in five years, but I recognized her.

‘Jeanne!’ I cried.

She was delighted. She held out her arms and I ran into them.

Then Damaris was there. Jeanne released me and looked at her rather fearfully and began to explain rapidly and incoherently, but I could understand quite easily what she was telling us.

We had always said that she would be welcome. We had asked her to come but she could not leave her mother and grandmother so she had not gone with us when we left. But we had said she might come, and she remembered. Grand’mère was dead; her mother had married and Jeanne was free. So she had come back to her little Clarissa whom she had saved when there was no one to look after her. And she wanted to be with her again… and Damaris had said…

Damaris cried out in her very English French that Jeanne was very welcome.

Arabella, who spoke French tolerably well because during the days before the Restoration she had lived in a château there, waiting for King Charles the Second to regain his throne, said that she had heard all about what Jeanne had done for me and she would be very welcome here.

Damaris kept saying: ‘Of course. Of course.’

And I, who was suddenly transported back to that damp cellar with the hostile Grand’mère and Maman, and only Jeanne to protect me from the harsh Paris streets and from life, cried out: ‘Do you understand what they are saying. Jeanne? You are to stay with us. You have come to us and your home is here now.’

Jeanne wept and embraced me again, looking at me with wonder, as though I had done something very clever by growing up.

We brought her to the table where she opened her eyes wide at the sight of so much food. Damaris explained who she was and Great-Grandfather Carleton rose rather ponderously, for as I have said he was getting older and stiff in the limbs, though he wouldn’t admit it, and he told her in very anglicized French that anyone who had served a member of his family well should never regret it, and although Jeanne could understand very little of what he was saying, she was well aware of the warmth of her welcome.